Blood and Gold
by Altum
Summary: An entity of untold power. A hero who lost everything. What started as a final, desperate attempt to save Hyrule may destroy it entirely.
1. Prologue

**Blanket Disclaimer:** I do not own the Legend of Zelda series, or its characters. That belongs to Nintendo. Original story developments are obviously my own, but more or less I'm just playing in their sandbox.

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**Blood and Gold**

_**Prologue**_

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It floated in the abyss, bodiless, at the mercy of thoughts it couldn't comprehend. It felt no feelings of any discernable nature, no pain or regret or confusion, no will to understand the images flashing through its conscious being.

Memories.

It recalled happiness vaguely. The notion of a smile. Silhouettes of relationships long since passed. Trials of hardship. All these things were recognizable, and yet so very far away. Without meaning.

A single sound whispered, pulled at its very essence. A song of disorienting familiarity. A call of purpose from across the cosmos, cradling it, begging its return.

_Link_, it heard.

_Hero._

It almost wanted to remember.


	2. Silent Night

**Blood and Gold**

_**Chapter I: Silent Night**_

_"In the beginning, Hyrule was nothing but a chaotic and magical void amidst a greater emptiness. Eventually, three cosmic beings took hold of it for themselves."_

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The evening sky was beautiful, even as the sun sank into the western wastes, its violet and orange strands of color daring to dance together despite the decrepit land below it.

Rusl always liked the twilight. It had a habit of making even the most dismal things a little easier on the senses, and on more than the odd occasion, it had helped put things back in perspective. Despite the lingering flames of war, all of the spirits of the dead passing across the Veil, all of the fighting, there were still some things in this world worth holding on to.

He turned to the brown-haired man next to him, who fumbled with a telescope, looking over the cliffside and down into the canyon.

"Tell me what we're looking at, Shad," Rusl asked.

"River runners," he said. "About a dozen maybe. They have a raft with some cargo on it. Doesn't look like much. I can't see why they'd need that many escorts for something that size, though."

River runners were fairly common. It was faster to brave the downstream current of the Redrock Falls to transport goods. Horses tied to rafts would pull cargo against the current as they walked the edges. Dangerous, but maybe the lesser of two evils. The desert's heat must've been unforgiving, even for the Gerudo.

"Genti's information seems solid," Rusl said. "They've got their hands on something important. I'll inform Auru. Tell Ashei that we'll move in soon."

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He followed his prey quietly. The wolves of the Ordon Woods were among the most cunning creatures in all of Hyrule. Silent, powerful, deadly. They were masters of the wild, a symbol every hunter strived to be.

In all of Link's hunts, he'd caught just one, the very same one he was tracking now. He reminded himself that that hunt hadn't exactly been fair in the first place.

This wolf, there was something about it. Something that urged him to let it free two years ago. The same thing that begged him to set out when he'd seen it this afternoon.

Link knelt down and traced the outline of the wolf's tracks. They were fresh. He moved his hand away from the tracks and let the grass run through his fingers. It whispered to him, told him that he was gaining on the wolf.

But there was something else. The forest's voice was different tonight, dark and distorted. Its natural harmonies were replaced by something far less beautiful and coherent.

Link reached for his bow, took a deep breath, and walked forward.

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Princess Zelda Hyrule sat outside of her bedchamber quietly, meditating on the recent events in the castle, trying to calm her mind. This would not be the first evening where sleep would elude her.

At night, a certain, unknowable fear gripped her. She couldn't explain it, though she tried her hardest. The war had come to an end. Peace treaties were being drawn up between the various nations inside her very home. And yet the atmosphere in the castle had grown undeniably tense in the wake of peace.

Perhaps it was the obvious and natural unease between so many leaders that had been enemies for over a dozen years. Maybe peace really was an illusion which everyone understood all too well.

Nevertheless, here she was, sitting in her nightgown on her balcony and watching the sun settle in the west. She yawned for what may have been the thousandth time. She would do anything just to get a good night's sleep.

But then again, sleep didn't necessarily bring rest. Not for her. She was scared to sleep. It wasn't Hyrule's political climate or the dark, foreboding feelings she got from _everything_ around her that kept her awake, but the nightmares.

She had had several dreams in the moments of sleep she managed to steal from the night. They were eerily similar to one another, and all of them utterly frightening. Dreams of ancient legends and age-old prophecies. Dreams of darkness enveloping Hyrule, an extreme malice gripping the lands and twisting its people into something... _else_. Dreams of a light that stood against it before finally succumbing.

That was why she sent Impa out to gather information the week before, without her father's approval.

He was, of course, too busy securing a peaceful future for all of Hyrule to worry about the potentially prophetic dreams of his daughter. Or, at least, that was the excuse she planned to use should she get caught stirring trouble behind his back.

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The night was quiet, save for the sounds of slow-moving water and tired hooves beating against red earth. It'd been several hours since Rusl and Shad had spotted the runners. After quickly talking with his commander, he and the rest of his team made their way towards a cleverly hidden trade route of the Gerudo: an uphill valley leading into the desert.

After taking their positions, they waited. Rusl stood still, his sword drawn and his back against a rocky wall. Ashei, a raven-haired woman in her early twenties, stood nearby in a similar manner, her face without expression. Maybe she was nervous, but he doubted it. Rusl nodded to her, and she flashed a half-assed smirk.

Above him, Shad kept watch while he was perched somewhat safely atop an outcropping of rock. He was more brains than brawn, but Rusl had taken the time to train him in ranged combat and helped condition him for battle, physically and mentally. It was useful to have someone take a vantage point and offer support from behind the lines.

Rusl looked up, and Shad gave him the "okay" and aimed into the night with his bow.

He took in a deep breath and waited for them to get closer. A flash of his family, Uli and Colin, distracted him for a moment, and a nervous mixture of fear and excitement swept through him.

Two cloaked Gerudo made their way past, and then a horse. The twang of Shad's bow sounded. One of the Gerudo screamed across the waterway, and Rusl and Ashei made their move. He knocked one out with the hilt of his blade and pushed a second into the river.

The Gerudo, caught off-guard, hissed to one another in their native tongue. The riders struggled to maintain control of their horses, which were arching back onto their hind legs, their fearful cries amplified by the canyon walls.

Rusl knew they had to finish quickly. It wouldn't be long before some uninvited attention came their way, and if the horses fled, the Gerudo's cargo would eventually be lost to the bottom of Lake Hylia.

"Ashei!" he yelled. "We need whatever's on that raft."

"Got it," she said, finishing off a confused Gerudo she was tangled up with. She started running towards the raft, and Rusl spotted two more enemies behind her, taking aim with their bows.

Rusl charged them from the side while they were distracted with Ashei, half-certain he'd stand a fighting chance. The Gerudo were not to be fooled with, especially in their own territory. They were expert marksmen and skilled assassins.

Rusl buried his blade to the hilt in one of their stomachs, and the second turned towards him, now holding a dagger instead of a bow. The first Gerudo, not yet dead, pulled the blade further into herself and let out a wet cackle. Rusl saw blood falling from her mouth as he tried to yank his sword free.

The second Gerudo fell, an arrow piercing into her neck. A second arrow hit the one still holding onto Rusl and his sword.

"You owe me, I suppose," he heard Shad call out.

Rusl chuckled to himself under his breath and turned back towards the raft. Ashei was grappling with one of the Gerudo, fighting to keep her balance.

"Help Ashei!" Rusl called out as he ran toward a Gerudo that was riding on horseback, taking aim at Ashei, and trying to keep the raft steady for the sake of only-Nayru-knows-what. He leapt up to the side of its mount, stabbed the Gerudo, and took control of the horse.

Rusl saw Ashei's assailant fall dead into the river, arrow through its back. On the other side, another mounted archer took aim at Ashei and shot. She let out a scream that made Rusl cringe as it hit her in the calf. Shad shot at the final runner, hitting it in the shoulder.

The soldier in Rusl wrestled with the situation, trying to find the best course of action to get what the Gerudo were carrying and save Ashei if possible. The horse across the river was free and wild now, which meant the raft was now out of control. She needed his help.

A screech came from overhead, and Rusl could hear the sound of heavy flapping.

"Shad, we've got a kargaroc! You need to take it down!"

In the night, it was hard to see the mounted, winged creature swoop down and pick up the cargo with its talons. Unfortunately, the raft capsizing in the river immediately after wasn't.

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The wolf stared Link straight in the eyes, completely passive. Its tail wasn't stiff. It didn't snarl. It didn't blink. It didn't move.

"You remember me," he said, less a question and more an observation. "Well, I remember you."

While it'd taken him a good three hours to finally track down the wolf, when Link eventually did find it, it was just laying down in the middle of a meadow. Waiting.

The wolf turned its head to Link's bow, which he'd instinctively kept aimed at the creature, and he lowered it. The forest felt more soothing here, its aura less foreboding than it had been earlier. It still felt odd--distant, maybe, like a detail you know is important but can't quite grasp. Just out of reach.

Had the wolf led him here? He laughed at the idea of it, and the wolf cocked its head. Maybe. Why'd he even follow it in the first place? Earlier, he'd guessed it was just for old time's sake, but now he wasn't so sure.

Link knelt down and stared back at the wolf, eye-to-eye. Its eyes were something else. Feral. Intimidating. Wise. It looked like it'd been around a long time, seen a lot of stuff, known a lot of secrets.

"Alright, boy, you've got me here. Now what do you want me to do?"

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**A/N:** Took a little bit to get into the swing of writing this, what with all the plot threads that I need to get started early on. It took a great deal of writing and then rewriting this chapter to form a decent starting point. It'll be easier to pick up as the story gets moving, so I apologize for the wait.

There will be three "parts" or plot movements, though there will be separate strings within each arc, obviously. Chapters will generally be as long as this early on, and longer as the story progresses. I think chapters should be focused on breaks in plot rather than word counts.

As for the story as a whole, it's going to come off as AU at first, especially with the meshing of characters, elements, and events that are all supposed to happen at different periods in Hyrule's history. Rest assured that this is intended and that I'm fairly well-versed in the series' "official" chronology. Each chapter will have a made-up excerpt from the Book of Mudora (a magical book containing the history, languages, and secrets of Hyrule from _A Link to the Past_) at the beginning describing the overall timeline of the _Zelda_ series as it pertains to this story. You can also refer to my profile page to see the chronology that I'm following at the moment. This story's placement in regards to the series will become obvious down the line.

Oh, and any questions about the Link in the prologue in regards to the Link here, well, you'll just have to wait and see.

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_**Edit (12/22/2009):** Cleaned up some sentences and phrasing. Not entirely happy with it yet, but it's good enough for now._


End file.
